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Annie Gugliotta

The Likable Lies of Campaign 2024

After the Tuesday night vice presidential debate ended, there was widespread praise about the demeanor of the candidates, Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance. “Voters overwhelmingly characterized the debate as positive in tone,” wrote CBS News, which hosted the debate and then conducted a poll right immediately afterward. The BBC headline used the word “politeness” to characterize the debate. GZERO used “civility.” It’s true. A much-needed Midwestern decency prevailed throughout the VP debate, the expected personal attacks giving way to a wider policy discussion.

After watching the screed-filled mayhem about immigrants eating pets that characterized the Donald Trump-Kamala Harris debate, the VP face-off was like sipping a cold beer in the middle of a heat wave.

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Republican Sen. JD Vance and Democrat Gov. Tim Walz greet each other before they square off during the CBS News vice presidential debate in New York City on Oct. 1, 2024.

Jack Gruber/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images via Reuters

Civility wins: Vance and Walz play (mostly) nice, spar on policy

In Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Sen. JD Vance and Gov. Tim Walz battled over the biggest issues in the 2024 election. Beyond defending Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s records, the two did something novel: They argued about boring old policy. What’s more, they even found brief moments of agreement and civility along the way.
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Vance and Walz face off

REUTERS/Tom Brenner/File Photo

Vance and Walz face off

Political scientists have longdebated the importance of presidential debates, but they tend to agree that vice-presidential debates are simply sideshows without much importance for election results. The most famous moment from any past VP debate was Lloyd Bentsen’s admonition of Dan Quayle as “no Jack Kennedy” in 1988, and it was Quayle’s running mate – then-vice president George Herbert Walker Bush – who easily won that election.

But Tuesday's faceoff between Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz may be different. National and swing-state polls suggest this might be the tightest presidential race in decades, and there hasn’t been much news in the past week to give either candidate new momentum. The Sept. 10 debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is now old news, and the two don’t appear likely to debate again. That may spark more interest in tonight’s faceoff.

The current stalemate may also increase the audience for tonight’s vice-presidential debate, Vance, currently a senator from Ohio, will likely prove much more disciplined than Trump did against Harris in advancing the campaign’s strongest arguments and exploiting Harris’ biggest vulnerabilities. Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, will be introducing himself to many voters who haven’t yet heard the sound of his voice. His humor and Midwestern accent may marginally boost Harris’ chances in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, the states that offer her the likeliest path to victory.

Will you be watching? If so, check out GZERO's debate bingo card!

Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia, on Aug. 3, 2024.

REUTERS/Umit Bektas

President Panic and the Grievance Ceiling

Has Donald Trump become President Panic and hit a grievance ceiling?

The confidence the world saw at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee after Trump survived a terrifying assassination attempt is suddenly gone. The rallying cry of “Fight, fight, fight!” has been replaced with “whine, whine, whine,” a transformation encapsulated in feverish social media posts Trump is sending from his baroque bunker in Mar-a-Lago.

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Billionaire's Row, a collection of super-tall residences for the uber-rich mostly on West 57th Street in New York City.

Richard B. Levine via Reuters

Hard Numbers: Canada probes diplomat’s “billionaire” digs, Bread price-fixing charges prove costly, US passport power tumbles, Sofa sex hoax spreads

9 million: Canada’s consul general in New York is in the hot seat amid an inquiry into the government’s recent purchase of the $9 million dollar Manhattan condo where he lives. Tom Clark, who has served in the post since last February, is one of several witnesses who will be called before parliament in a scandal that could also involve Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly. The pricy three-bedroom apartment is located on the stretch of West 57th Street known as “Billionaire’s Row.”

500 million: Food retail giant Loblaw Cos. Ltd. and its parent company George Weston Ltd. have reportedly agreed to pay $500 million over allegations of bread price fixing. A class-action suit was brought against the two companies and several other retailers, alleging that the firms were part of a 14-year price-fixing conspiracy that artificially hiked bread prices.

8: The global power of the US is clearly in decline … at least when it comes to the country’s passport. The little blue book has slid to eighth place in the annual Henley Passport Index, which counts the visa-free travel destinations open to citizens of every country. A US passport holder can currently show up without a visa in 186 of the world’s 225 countries. In first place is Singapore with 195. It wasn’t always this way: A decade ago, the US shared the top spot with the UK.

0: Despite a deluge of internet memes claiming the contrary, there is zero evidence that Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance ever had sex with a couch. A fake scan of several pages from the Ohio Senator’s 2016 bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir about his Appalachian upbringing, seemed to show he’d confessed to having had the curious congress with his cushions as an adolescent. But the entire thing was fake. That didn’t stop it from being shared hundreds of thousands of times. Whatever your politics, be careful out there on the internet: Hilarious hoaxes abound.

Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) leaves the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York after the second day of deliberations after an indictment for an alleged 16 counts of conspiracy on July 15, 2024, in New York City. Menendez is charged with using his political influence to benefit Egypt in exchange for compensation, a scheme orchestrated by his wife and by three business co-conspirators, Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes who are charged with similar crimes relating to payments made to Menendez on Monday September 25, 2023 the Senator denied all allegations and that the $500,000 found in his house by agents is an old fashioned way of safeguarding money against emergencies.

John Lamparski via Reuters Connect

Hard Numbers: Sen. Menendez found guilty, Protests turn deadly in Kenya, China’s readers scoop up Vance’s book, Rwanda’s early vote count in, Bangladeshi protests claim lives

16: Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey was found guilty on Tuesday of all 16 counts in his federal corruption trial, including bribery, acting as a foreign agent (a first for a US senator), and fraud. Prosecutors said “he put his power up for sale,” lending support in exchange for money, gold bars, and other bribes in a yearslong scheme. He faces decades in prison when he’s sentenced on Oct. 29.

1: One person was killed Tuesday in violent anti-government protests that resumed in Kenya less than a week after Kenyan President William Rutodismissed most of his cabinet to demonstrate his commitment to make radical changes to the demonstrators. The protests first broke out last month – 39 people were killed, and demonstrators breached the Parliament building – in response to a deeply unpopular finance bill that aimed to raise $2 billion in taxes to offset worsening economic crises. Ruto backed down from the tax, but protesters are still demanding that he resign.

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United States Senator JD Vance (Republican of Ohio) at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., on Friday, February 23, 2024.

Photo by Annabelle Gordon/CNP/ABACAPRESS.COM via REUTERS

The pluses and minuses of JD Vance

All running mates bring advantages and disadvantages to presidential candidates, but the choice of JD Vance is a striking sign of the political times. Vance strengthens Donald Trump’s “champion of the working man” message – a Republican rebranding away from its strongly pro-business past. We also saw that emphasis in the striking first-night convention speech from Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, a labor union with 1.3 million members, who accused business and corporate lobbyists of “waging a war against American workers.” That’s not a speech you would have heard at any Republican National Convention of the past century. Vance’s reputation as defender of the globalization-battered working class can help Trump in the electorallycrucial Midwest industrial belt states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

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The Deplorables Whisperer
GZERO World S1E11: The Deplorables Whisperer

The Deplorables Whisperer

"My natural inclination, from the start, was to be really, really supportive of Donald Trump's message."

A little over a year since a wave of populist support in "flyover country" helped elect President Donald J. Trump, Ian Bremmer descends from the snowflaked perches of his globalist headquarters in New York to discuss the state of Trump's base with Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance.

Plus, a new segment we call: PUPPET REGIME.

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